Early phone sex, Oct. 1975

Any phone enthusiast would agree you would be getting screwed paying $129.95 for a refurbished pay phone. But wait! Pay the equivalent in 2009 dollars -- $526.39 -- for some real depravity. Hell, it looks like they even replaced the durable stainless steel handset tether with the usual grub-grabbing, quickly-knotted vinyl coil job.

Say, why don't we get back to the government-run phone business? Looking back, the U.S. home phone market was about the closest thing we had to putting some of that Soviet magic in our lives.


"No, my new phone doesn't ring. No. You see, I'm the ding-a-ling!"

See this post in historical context here.